 |
||
 |
 |
      |
 |
||
 |
||
 |
||
 |
||
|
||
Elisha
brings a breath of fresh air to oral health!
Deakin University’s leading place
in health research has again been re-confirmed by the awarding to talented
young PhD student
Elisha Riggs of the 2007 Public Health Association of Australia Evaluation
Award.
Elisha led the process evaluation of the Country KIDS (Kids Improved Dental Status) research study, an intervention study conducted through a community-university partnership that sought to make a difference to children's oral health and health inequalities in rural Victoria.
“This is a huge win for Elisha, and for Deakin,” said Professor Elizabeth Waters, Chair of Public Health in the School of Health and Social Development.
“Elisha is a wonderful early stage HDR (Higher Degrees by Research) student, and has made a substantive contribution to the broad range of child public health research, and in particular oral health inequalities, in the short two years that she has been with us following her Deakin undergraduate and honours studies.”
Elisha put the award down to “a lot of hard work” and having a great group of researchers around her.
“It is great that the PHAA recognises students and young health promotion professionals as contributors to the health promotion field and offer this award to encourage and recognise the work they are doing,” she said.
“I’m very lucky to be a part of such a supportive and enthusiastic research team who recognise the value of evaluation in health promotion practice and encouraged me to apply for the award.
“I’m really looking forward to getting into my PhD and applying these skills I have gained in this project about incorporating a mixed methods approach to community based research.”
The Country KIDS study was led by Mark Gussy, Professor Elizabeth Waters, and Associate Professor Nicky Kilpatrick from the Murdoch Children's Research Institute.
Process evaluations focus on whether participants receive the intervention as it was intended, and if not what it was that impacted on the desired outcome.
The information is then integrated with outcomes so that researchers and health workers can a get better idea of what worked and for whom.
The child health inequalities research is conducted by the Victorian Child Oral Health Research Collaboration, a partnership between researchers based at Deakin, the Royal Children's Hospital/MCRI, and international colleagues in University College London and the University of Cardiff.
Elisha's PhD work centres on the socio-cultural influences on child oral health inequalities in inner urban Melbourne, working with refugee and migrant communities.
DEAKIN HAS DESIGNING CARS DOWN TO A T!
Emeritus
Professor John Duncan, FASM, was recently presented with the Geoff Wilson
Medal by Deakin University.
The medal celebrates the career of Professor Geoff Wilson AM, the former Vice-Chancellor of Deakin University and is awarded annually by the Faculty of Science and Technology to eminent engineers and scientists who have made an outstanding contribution in the international arena, in research, teaching or administration.
At the invitation of Professor Peter Hodgson, Professor Duncan comes to Deakin from New Zealand two or three times a year on extended visits.
It was on the last of these, and much to his surprise, that he was presented with the medal by Professor Hodgson at a function at the Geelong Technology Precinct that celebrated the Iranian New Year and also the cultural diversity of the researchers.
“We have a lot of researchers here at Deakin from all over the world,” said Professor Hodgson.
“It is a sign of the quality of the research that we are doing that we can attract these internationally recognised figures.
“John, Australian born, now living in retirement in New Zealand, and with a record for excellent research carved out all over the world, is one of these.
"He has been an active member of our team over many years, giving up his time to help our research students gain more insight into metal forming.
“He is passionate in the belief that the automotive industry needs to understand the basic mechanics of how a car panel is made and that we need more engineering skills and less black art.
“He has also helped students work out the structure of their theses and prepare papers for publication.” Professor Duncan said the award was unexpected.
“It is both a great surprise and a great honour,” he said. “I enjoy coming to Deakin because it has some of the best young engineers in the world all working on something that I believe to be very important.”
Professor Duncan has been a consultant to the metals and motor industries in Europe and North America for many years building on what must one of the most pure pedigrees in the motor vehicle manufacturing process in Australia.
“My grandfather, James Duncan, arrived in Adelaide from Scotland in 1859,” said Professor Duncan. “In 1865, he set up a coach building company, Duncan and Fraser Ltd, and was influential in obtaining protection for manufacturing in Australia. The company imported Oldsmobile cars from about 1904 and Model T Fords from 1909. As a result of tariff arrangements they were successful in building bodies for imported chassis as well as assembling standard Ford bodied vehicles. They also built the tram cars for Ballarat and Bendigo.”
The company went into voluntary liquidation shortly after Ford set up its own plants in Australia, the first of these in Geelong in 1925.
Recently Professor Duncan acquired a 1918 Ford Model T tourer with a body built especially by the family company for the Adelaide Festival of that year. This is with Duncan descendents in South Australia and hopefully will take part in the 100-year celebration of the Model T throughout Australia next year. He is also about to publish a booklet on the design of the Model T as part of the centenary activities and he is encouraging the rest of his family to create a tangible presence, as he calls it, in Adelaide to honour James Duncan and his four sons who were pioneers in the industry.
As well as keeping alive his family’s name in the history of the motor vehicle industry he believes it is important to remember the work of all those who built the Australian automotive industry in the first place. He is aware that the car industry is facing huge challenges and it is important for engineers and scientists to provide the solutions needed to make cars that are gentler on the environment and also safer.
Professor Duncan now lives in retirement on a small farm in New Zealand. Although his grandfather’s 1918 Ford tourer will remain in South Australia where it belongs, he has in New Zealand a share in a 1926 Ford Model TT truck and a 1911 Mitchell roadster that he and fellow students at the University of Melbourne restored in the 1950s.
“This car was built in Racine, Wisconsin and has a five litre engine of basic design,” Professor Duncan said.“When it does run, it is remarkably fast.”
Probably though not quite as fast as the vehicles that will use the materials Deakin students are creating under Professor Duncan’s watchful eye.
Research Services Division:
Geelong Campus at Waurn Ponds
Pigdons Road, Geelong, Victoria 3217 Australia
Telephone: +61 3 5227 2673 Facsimile:
+61 3 5227 2175
Email: dvc-research@deakin.edu.au
www.deakin.edu.au/research
Deakin Research Updates - back copies
Back issues of Deakin Research Updates are available at: www.deakin.edu.au/research
WORKING TOGETHER IS COMPULSORY
Even in its early days, Deakin University’s Institute of Biotechnology has been developing strong working relationships with similar organisations in the Geelong region.
One of the most significant of these is with Barwon Biomedical Research (BBR). Part of Barwon Health - one of the largest and most successful regional health organisations in the world - BBR is led by Professor Geoff Nicholson and Associate Professor Mark Kirkland who sees the links between the organisations as not just advantageous but compulsory.
“We have got to work together because Geelong is not a big enough place to have 10 different research groups,” he said. “We have got to be collaborating, working off each other’s strengths.
“We are very lucky already to have found a strong
linkage between the work the material science people are doing and the
sort of direction we wanted to take with our own work.
This applies both to Professor Nicholson’s work and to my own.”
In 2006, Professor Nicholson was the senior partner
investigator in an Australian Research Council grant-winning team that
also included
Dr Ciu’e Wen and Dr Wenji Yan from Deakin. Professor Nicholson’s
biomedical skills complement Dr Wen’s materials knowledge and Dr
Yan’s mechanical engineering background as they search for a more
effective material from which to make replacement hips.
Understanding the fabric of life: pattern-searching pays off for Phoebe Chen
Bioinformatics is the information science
of biology. It is the application of mathematics, statistics, computational
science and information technology
(IT) to problems and questions in molecular and genomic biology.
“In the last decade, animal, human and plant genomes have been sequenced,” said Associate Professor Phoebe Chen of Deakin University’s Faculty of Science and Technology.
“This means we have knowledge of the genetic code of particular species. However, we still don’t understand what this information means – there is an enormous amount of data in the genetic code of any organism, a lot of it may be what we call junk DNA.
“Our research develops tools to understand the fabric of life, we look for patterns in the genetic code and try and make sense of those patterns.”
Professor Chen’s work has been recognized well outside the boundaries at Deakin.She is a chief investigator at the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence in Bioinformatics, which also includes researchers from the University of Queensland, the Australian National University, Macquarie University and the University of Newcastle. The Centre has recently been re-funded following an announcement by the Minister for Education, Science and Training, the Hon. Julie Bishop MP, in which she awarded an additional $67.6 million over three years for high-performing research centres. Professor Chen will receive $240K to carry out research from 2008-2010.
Keeping alive a family tradition...